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Views against suicide EssayJessie mothers remarks to commit suicide is to accept the logic of the absurd but in some small way to triumph over it. (p. 24) Psychiatrists believe that committing suicide is self-abuse and self-murder (masturbation and suicide). Both behaviors became the bogeys of the psychoanalysts as well. In 1910, Freud concluded the first essay in which he specifically addressed the subject of suicide with these words Let us susp culmination our judgment till experience has solved this problem. (Freud, 1910). What is the problem? It was knowing how it becomes workable for the extraordinarily powerful spiritedness instinct to be overcome. In 1917, Freud announced his famous solution self-murder is aggression turned against the self No neurotic harbors thoughts of suicide which he has not turned back upon himself from murderous impulses against others (Freud, 1917). Freuds far-reaching generalization is a sobering reminder of the influential influence of the re ligious-psychiatric tradition He treats suicide as if it were a unitary occurrence. David Hume (1711-1776) would wholly dis restrain with Jessie, arguing that suicide is not contrary to love of self, of neighbor, or of God.Hume claimed that even assuming the truth of Aquinass theism, one requirement of not preclude suicide from existence rational and moral. That is, if it is consistently permissible to encroach on divine providence by disturbing the operations of diverse inborn laws (by curing diseases and the like), then, by parity of reasoning, it ought to be similarly permissible to commit suicide. Moreover, couldnt a person commit suicide while expressing gratitude to God for the good she has enjoyed and for the exponent to escape her current misery?After all, Aquinas allowed self-inflicted killings when one is divinely commanded to do so Hume, a known skeptic on religious matters, is existence ever so ironical and sardonic in his essay. When I fall upon my own sword, there fore I receive my death equally from the hands of the immortal as if it had proceeded from a lion, a precipice, or a fever. There is no being which possesses any power or faculty, that it receives not from its Creator, nor is there any one, which by ever so irregular an spotion, eject encroach upon the plan of his providence, or disorder the universe.Its operations are his works equally with that chain of events which it invades and whichever principle prevails, we may for that very reason conclude it to be most favored by him (Hume, 1783). Moreover, Ecclesiastic law still forbids suicide, and religious penalties against the act are, nominally, still in force. However, as soon as secular law recognized insanity as an excuse for suicide, so, too, did canon law. For approximately the past century, rabbinic and church authorities besides have classified suicides as ipso facto non compos, permitting them to receive normal religious burial services.The Encyclopedia of the Jewish Rel igion states Judaism does not consider the individual as the owner or unlimited master of his own life consequently, suicide, which amounts in rabbinic thought to murder, is strictly forbidden. . . . However, recent rabbinic ruling considers the suicide as being of unsound mind, and as such he is allowed to be interned sic with others. (R. J. Z. Werblowsky and G. Wigoder, p. 367). The romish Catholic church and the Protestant clergy use the same formula for annulling the sinfulness of suicide.After a well-known Catholic American killed himself and was given an elaborate burial, a spokesman explained Today it is the churchs feeling that a person must be crazy to commit suicide. And we ready the insane in the hands of God, for his mercy and his judgment. . . . The church leave alone not judge him. (San Francisco Chronicle, 22 October 1983, p. 3) Roman law expanded the criteria that made suicide morally acceptable. For example, tedium vitae a mental state we are likely to call d epression, but is better rendered as having had enough (of life) -was a justification for it (A. J.L. van Hoof, p. 122).However, Roman law prohibited the suicide of slaves, because they destroyed not themselves but their masters property and of defendants accused of crime, because their effect prevented the law from determining whether they were guilty or not. If their deed was interpreted as signifying guilt, the law required that their corpse be denied ritual burial and their property be confiscated. Christian canon law adopted the pattern of denying religious burial to the suicides corpse, and medieval English criminal law reinstated the penalty of forfeiting the suicides property (A.J. L. van Hoof, p. 16).Views for suicide Jessie claims the decision to be a rational one, a logical conclusion to a life that has lost its true meaning there are disturbing glimpses of another motivation. To begin with she is on medication, which has given her an unvarnished sense of clarity and equanimity. If she is herself, then, she is so by virtue of chemical intervention, though there are hints of an obsessive behavior not touched by her medicine. She has a notepad in her pocket which contains a checklist, a countdown to annihilation.She is, she explains, cold all the time, and longs for the dark and quiet of death, a place where nobody can get me Dead is everybody and everything I ever knew, gone. Dead is dead quiet (night Mother, p. 16). She likens herself to Jesus, whom she suddenly perceives as a suicide (I didnt know I thought that) (p. 17). Though, well known philosopher may agree with Jessie as Margolis takes suicide to be essentially a matter of choosing death for its own sake. In the case of genuine suicide, according to Margolis, the victims overriding concern is to end his own life. (1975) Moreover, Immanuel Kant claims that the exercise of freedom in self-destruction is self-contradictory. He definems to favor, however, the moral heroism of Cato (a Roman statesman who killed himself rather than surrender to Julius Caesar), but does not stigmatize it a suicide, since Cato was presumably attempting to rescue his personal integrity and not intending to destroy himself. That is, despite his antisuicide stance, Kant claims that there are times when life ought to be sacrificed.If I cannot come to my life except by violating my duties towards myself, I am bound to sacrifice my life rather than violate these duties. He views humanity in ones own person as inviolable. Suicide, by contrast, treats our personhood as a thing it reduces us to the stage of a beast. Persons, for Kant, are ends-in-themselves, having the capability for autonomy and rationality that comprise their humanity. Jessie suicidal act goes with Kant view of life. According to him, Life is not more important than virtue.To live is not a necessity but to live honorably while life lasts is a necessity. Kant maintains that the fabric of society is destabilized by those who advocate a right to suicide and romanticize it somewhat in the progression. Nonetheless, pace his categorical imperative, it seems suicide can be universalized on Kantian grounds, e. g. , anyone whose situation in life is such that his or her continued existence would cause others a greater amount of harm than his or her suicide must commit suicide.Conclusion According to the sources discuss, it can be said that argument against suicide are more powerful and it is definitely goes against Jesses suicide. Jessie chooses to shoot herself with her fathers gun, and if not with that then with her husbands. These were the two men she loved, the two men who might have saved her had they not left, derelict her in their diverse ways. There is no irony in the choice. The man who saw her into life, and perhaps tainted her blood with the seeds of epilepsy, now ushers her out.At the same time, Thelma, apparently disengaged, separated from her female child by a sense of guilt and mutual incom prehension, and finds herself deeply committed to saving her. While her mother philosophy was Things happen. You do what you can about them and see what happens next (p. 39) is not without its logic or ethics. Moments before her daughters death, indeed, this woman, who until now has appeared content to drift through life, unquestioningly, can be explained as nearly unconscious from the ablaze devastation so far beyond what is known as pain that she is virtually unreachable(p.52).For the first time in her life she knows what she is living for and though she will be frustrated in her attempts to save Jessie, Jessie, perhaps, may have saved her in so far as she has lured her back into the world.Work Cited Catholic Church Says It Wont Judge White, San Francisco Chronicle, 22 October 1983, p. 3. A. J. L. van Hoof, From Autothanasia to Suicide, (London Rutledge, 1990) p. 122. Freud, Contributions to a Discussion on Suicide (1910), in SE Standard Edition, vol. 11, p. 232. Essays on Suici de, and the Immortality of the Soul, ascribed to the late David Hume, Esq.Two Letters on Suicide, from Rosseaus sic Eloisa (1783) Freud, Mourning and Melancholia (1917), SE, vol. 14, p. 252 Joseph Margolis, Negativities The Limits of Life (Columbus, 1975), pp. 23-36. Marsha Norman, night Mother (New York, 1983). R. J. Z. Werblowsky and G. Wigoder, eds. , The Encyclopedia of the Jewish Religion, p. 367. Richard B. Brandt, The Morality and Rationality of Suicide, in Handbook for the Study of Suicide, edited by Seymour Perlin, pp 61-76, 1975. U S. News and World Report (April 9, 1984) 18.